


Photographic Memory

by wonder_boy



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Gil Arroyo Needs a Hug, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:13:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24745894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonder_boy/pseuds/wonder_boy
Summary: Gil grabs the piece of candy from his pocket and places it on the counter like he did the last time. “Kid?” he swallows hard, “Is that you?”-Just when he thinks his heart can't take anymore loss, Gil loses Malcolm.
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright, Gil Arroyo/Jackie Arroyo
Comments: 27
Kudos: 60





	Photographic Memory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jameena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jameena/gifts).



> I literally said like two days ago I'd never write MCD but Jameena wanted something spooky and I like sad things so here we are. I have no excuse. If you don't like MCD, click away! If you came to get your heart broken, then enjoy the fic!

Gil spends nearly ten minutes looking for his wallet. He can’t remember where he put it and he’s flipped over just about every chair in his house to find it. He looks at his watch only to realize he’s running late to work. It doesn’t motivate him to go faster; in fact, he’s been late to the precinct for twelve days in a row for one reason or another.

He gets lucky, though. The wallet’s been tossed on the floor of his home office in a weird spot that he can’t quite see. He snatches it off the ground and runs out the door.

It’s been six months since the funeral.

He carries green candy around with him ever since, a small reminder of what he lost. It makes him think of the ring he still wears on his finger even when he takes Jessica out for dinner. Well, when he used to.

Now he spends his nights in a bottle, pouring his sorrows until the glass is full with whiskey and regret. Gil chugs most nights, others he just flips the TV to some random channel and sips away, lost in thought till the wee hours of the morning.

He shows up to work hungover more often than not. Dani and JT are at his side whenever they can be, a tactic he’s picked up on but he doesn’t have it in him to tell them off. Usually they make it a habit to spend lunch with him, just eating in his office talking about the mundane things in life. They gave him his space for weeks, letting him grieve on his own because they knew how much Malcolm meant to him.

When Malcolm was buried, everything changed from that point on. His mother drank like a true alcoholic, spending her days laying on the couch with a bottle not too far from her. Ainsley distanced herself from Jessica as she closed herself off and put all of her energy into her career. Martin practically went catatonic when he heard the news.

Dani and JT had their own way of grieving. It put her in the headspace of when she was sixteen at the funeral of her late father. She’s lost another person she loved, and her heart couldn’t take any more heartache. JT missed hearing his voice rattle off something irrelevant at nine in the morning, and he yearned to have a brother again. Edrisa became quiet and less jovial than her usual upbeat spirit. She makes it a point to bring lollipops to every crime scene if she’s expecting the team, and hands out the same flavors Bright gave them every single time.

Gil just broke down. It was hard to watch Jackie lose her fight – having to bury his _son_ just gutted him. It devastated him to his core and it broke something within, something that will never be fixed even if he tried every therapeutic trick in the book. The tears never stopped and the days dragged on.

Followed by being late to work, Gil gets chewed out by the commissioner for the 16th precinct’s mediocre numbers and for losing control of a few of his officers on his watch. He threatens to have him replaced if he doesn’t shape up and get his act together but it doesn’t faze Gil. He’s made that threat before.

It’s another day at the office but being chastised for his sloppy leadership still stung. It bothered him throughout the day and it followed him home. Gil sank into his sofa and drank until his vision swam and his head throbbed. A chill runs through the room. The temperature drops but he assumes his A/C is on the fritz since its October in New York. He sits there until it bothers him enough to wrap himself in one of Jackie’s blankets, perched in the corner with the TV on in the background.

Not a day goes by without thinking about Malcolm. He’s so lost in his own thoughts that he doesn’t even notice the TV turning off. It’s the frigid air in the room that brings him out of his trance. “What the hell?” he mutters to himself, rocking forward to get off the couch. He checks the thermostat and it reads fifty three, twenty degrees lower than what it should’ve been.

Gil is too inebriated to try and make sense of it so he cranks it back up. Then there’s a loud crash coming from the kitchen that makes him jump. One of his favorite glasses lies shattered on the tile in the middle of the floor. His head cocks to the side in confusion as he stares at the broken glass.

Another crash makes him whip his head around to the coffee table in the living room where a picture of Jackie from their wedding has fallen over. Gil abandons the glass and walks to the living room with his guard up. Was someone in his house?

He carefully picks up the frame and looks at the picture, feeling a wave of nostalgia and longing wash over him.

She was so undeniably _beautiful_ , how did he get so lucky? His eyes trail down the picture and land on a boy who was smiling, standing next to him holding the hand of his little sister. He remembers how excited Malcolm was when he told him that he was going to propose, how he hugged Gil and reassured him that he was making the best decision of his life. That she was going to say yes and they were going to have the biggest celebration when she did.

The memory brings another wave of tears to his eyes. He swallows the lump in this throat, sits the frame down on the table and returns back to the kitchen to clean up the glass. His knees pop as he gets off the floor to dump the dustpan in the trashcan and he puts the broom back in the pantry.

He stands in the middle of the kitchen with his hands in his pocket, feeling the aches in his body from abusing it so much. His fingers pull the small green candy and place it on the counter. Gil stares at it wistfully, thinking about Malcolm. How much he loves him, how much he misses him, and how he could really use a hug from him right about now.

Then it moves.

Or, he _thinks_ it moved. He’s not really sure.

Gil rubs his eyes with his knuckles and looks again, waiting to see if it’ll happen again _. This is_ _silly_ , he thinks. But he anticipates it, expecting something bizarre to happen. He stands there for several minutes waiting. Sadly, nothing happens. It frustrates him to think he was probably drunk enough that his mind rationalized something he wishes would happen.

Annoyed, Gil goes to pick up the piece when it slides away from his fingers and onto the floor. He steps back in shock, gawking at the candy, blinking profusely. Gil slowly steps away from it and runs to his room, locking the door behind him as his chest heaves, trying to catch his breath.

He doesn’t get much sleep that night. He spends an ungodly amount of time on the internet researching strange occurrences that happen at home. It leads him down a rabbit hole until he finds an underlying theme in other people’s posts: ghosts. Spirits some may call it, but as the sun was beginning to rise over Manhattan, Gil is convinced that there’s a ghost wandering around in his house.

It doesn’t really surprise him; his house was old and had several previous owners, a couple of whom have died there years ago. He tries not to think much of it when he’s at work, wired with so much coffee that he might not need his bourbon to put him to sleep later. Dani and JT knock on his office door, lunch in hand.

“You know, I never really noticed how dark your room is. Has it always been this way?” Dani asks, getting comfortable on his sofa. JT locks the door behind him and shrugs, “It’s the precinct, Dani. Not a whole lot of yellow and pink on the walls.” He hands Gil his to-go plate and sits on the other side of Dani, close to the door.

She snorts. “No shit, JT, but I’m just saying. You could lighten it up a little bit, you know? Add some art or something.” Gil is picking at his food, not really paying attention to them. His mind is stuck on last night and that piece of candy he left on the floor. It hasn’t moved since – he checked before leaving.

He has a new piece today, one from his bowl he keeps on his desk that sits next to a small picture of him and Malcolm one Christmas. It sends Gil on a trip down memory lane. It was below freezing that night and he can’t remember why they were out in central park in the first place. He remembered how giddy Malcolm got when he saw a tiny Christmas tree in one of the store fronts across the streets and dragged Gil to see it.

He marveled at the size of it as if he’s never seen one in his life. Gil didn’t understand why it caught his attention but he never questioned it, he just went along with it. Then Malcolm flagged down a stranger walking down the street to take their picture in front of this tiny tree. He insisted that Gil make a funny face so he did, and surprisingly, Malcolm did too, and it made for a heartwarming picture.

Then it fell over on his desk.

It took Gil out of his trance, flinching in his chair so hard that it startled his detectives. JT raised his eyebrows, “You alright there, boss?” Dani watches his expression carefully. Gil hides behind a small smile, picking up a pen off the floor. “Sorry, I’m fine. I thought I saw a bug.” Dani knows it’s a lie, but she doesn’t have the heart to argue with him over something small and JT just shrugs like it’s a good enough answer.

Gil picks the frame up and goes back to eating his food in silence.

Everyone goes back to work when lunch is over. The rest of the day is spent in a daze. Gil goes through file after file, closing out cases and filling out paperwork till sundown. It’s twenty past nine when Dani comes knocking on his door. She offers to walk him out to his car which meant that she wanted to talk about something important and there wasn’t room to say no.

“Let me clean up in here, I’ll meet you in a sec.” Dani nods and disappears into the bullpen. He puts away the files in an order he can remember and grabs his things. Before he turns the light off on his desk, he picks up the picture from earlier and looks it over, letting the warmth of the memory wash over him again.

He solemnly smiles at Malcolm.

Gil places the photo back where it was. His hand rests on the small lamp, eyes still fixed on Malcolm. He remembers that Dani’s waiting on him so he turns off the light and heads from the door.

“Good night, kid.”

Just as he’s about to pull the handle on the door to walk out, Gil hears the picture fall again.

For the second night in a row, Gil spends hours on his laptop looking for answers instead of sleeping. Tonight’s poison of choice is scotch. He’s only three glasses into his frantic research when the glass is shoved off of the coffee table in front of him. Thankfully, the rug breaks its fall. He doesn’t bother to pick it up but instead, keeps his head buried in his computer.

A few minutes later, another glass from the kitchen breaks on the floor. Now that he knows there’s a spirit in his house purposefully trying to break his drinking glasses, it’s starting to piss him off. Gil assumes that’s the point – a destructive and costly tactic to get the point across.

It reminds him of a certain profiler who had a knack for causing trouble if it didn’t find him first. He doesn’t dwell on the thought, though. If he believed it were somehow Malcolm Bright breaking his glasses from the afterlife, everyone would assume he’s finally cracked.

It’s not like it can get any worse.

So he tests his theory out.

Gil puts his computer down on the couch next to him and gets up from his spot. He grabs his bottle of scotch into the kitchen and grabs another glass from the counter, stepping over the broken glass on the floor. He pours one and waits.

When nothing happens, he takes a few sips to tamper his nerves. The second it hits the counter top, the glass gets knocked down onto the floor, shattering and spilling the scotch everywhere.

So he takes it that the ghost isn’t fond of his drinking.

Malcolm wouldn’t be either.

He wouldn’t be happy to see him like this.

Suddenly, Gil is overcome with shame and guilt. For drinking himself to an early death, to losing himself to sleepless nights, to letting himself go because he was so angry and so heartbroken for losing the one thing that gave his life any meaning.

He knows what happened wasn’t his fault, but he can’t help but feel responsible for his kid. Malcolm wouldn’t like his pity party, either.

It can’t be. It just can’t. That’d be crazy, right?

Another glass shatters on the floor and Gil immediately gets it.

Maybe it is.

He bites his lip and ponders a bit. Then, in a whisper, Gil calls to him. “Malcolm?” He turns around to see if anything will break or fall. The temperature in the kitchen drops but it doesn’t bother him; somewhere on the internet, he read that it was sign of presence.

Gil grabs the piece of candy from his pocket and places it on the counter like he did the last time. “Kid?” he swallows hard, “Is that you?”

The orange piece only moves an inch, and Gil can feel the tears welling up in the corner of his eyes. He releases a shaky breath he’s been holding and bends down, resting his hands on his knees as he bends over, overwhelmed with emotion. He feels so relieved, so _moved_ that his son was still with him, and yet so miserable because of how much he missed him.

“God,” he chokes out, nearly sobbing, “I miss you. I miss you so much, kid. I miss hearing your voice, I miss talking to you, I miss holding you and I can’t,” he never finishes. He’s cut off by his own tears but he knows that Malcolm doesn’t care. Gil sniffles as he picks himself up, feeling his chest tighten when he comes up for air and wipes his face.

“All I could think about was Jackie,” he starts, feeling another wave of tears, “and how it felt to lose her. Then I lost you and I–” his expression crumbles. “I couldn’t stand losing the two people who I love more in this world, more than I could ever love myself.”

He wipes his face again, sighing. A short laugh escapes his lips and he shakes his head, grinning. “I know you don’t want to see me throw another pity party so I’ll stop. I just can’t believe it’s you.” He turns his attention back to all of the broken glass on the floor and spilt scotch in the cracks of the tile. Another smile tugs at his lips and he doesn’t say anything.

Gil carefully walks over to his pantry to get the broom and dustpan.

Malcolm sits quietly on the counter watching Gil clean up his mess like he always has. He plays with the candy while he’s not looking, content.

“There are other ways to get my attention, you know.” He dumps out the glass into his trashcan and sweeps up the remaining shards. “I swear, if I find a piece of glass in my foot tomorrow...”

The comment makes Malcolm laugh because he knows Gil can’t finish it.

Once everything gets picked up and he safely cleans the tiles, Gil takes the piece of candy with him to his bedroom, stepping out of his clothes from the work day. He takes off his ring for a brief moment and sets the candy down next to it. When he turns to the clock on his nightstand, he grimaces at time.

It’s three eighteen in the morning.

If he’s lucky, he might get three hours of sleep tonight and beat the morning traffic by the time he leaves. He takes a quick shower, runs through what’s left of his night routine and hops into bed, feeling the exhaustion weigh him down as he sinks into the covers. He lays on his side so he could look at the two items on his nightstand as he drifts off to sleep.

He got to see his son, today.

After six long, painful months, he saw his son again.

* * *

Gil wakes up to the sound of his alarm blaring from his phone. He groans as he reaches over to hit the snooze and roll over in the sheets to get an extra five minutes. Then it goes off again, and he has no choice but to get up.

He grumbles when he pulls the sheets off over his legs. He sits down on the side of the bed and rubs his eyes with his knuckles, yawning. He scratches an itch on the back of his head and looks over to the stand. The memory of last night clears the fog from his head when his eyes land on the orange piece of candy, untouched. He can feel the bitter chill in the room and it brings him comfort to know he didn’t wake up alone this morning.

He instinctively reaches to pick up his ring to put it on but his fingers hit the stand instead. It’s not there.

Panic sets in and Gil wracks his brain to try and remember where he put it; he could’ve sworn he put her right next to Malcolm last night, that’s where she’s been these past six months. He gets up and looks under the bed, behind the dresser, all over the bathroom and through the sheets.

Everything turns up empty. When he walks over to the bowl on his dresser – a little gift from Jackie to keep his keys and watch in place – he eyes the silver band next to his wallet, opened to the tiny photo of her he keeps in the front pocket. A shaky hand picks it up from the dresser and slides it on his finger with a grin.

He certainly didn’t wake up alone.

When he gets to the office, it’s clear that he’s a lot more jovial and alert than he has been in months. He’s not screaming from the rooftops to every officer that passes him but it’s undeniable that something is different about him.

Dani and JT can spot it from a mile away. They don’t question it during their lunch no matter how much they want to. They decide that whatever it is must be good for him, and it’s been so long since they’ve seen their lieutenant with a genuine smile on his face with an attitude to crack a few cases.

Malcolm makes an appearance at work. He sits on top of Gil’s desk with his arms folded, watching the scene from across the room. While Dani and JT are debating something completely irrelevant to their suspect, Gil notes the tipped over picture on his desk. He takes it as a sign that they should stay on subject and Malcolm nods.

Though Gil can’t see him, he knows he’s there, watching and listening.

When dinner rolls around, Gil insists that he pays for the team and orders from one of the few restaurants that Malcolm liked. He even invites Edrisa to join them, and with excitement, she goes off on a tangent about the body she’s currently examining while they eat as if he were there to listen to her. To Gil’s surprise, he is.

He gets home a little early that night. The living room is chilly and their wedding photo on the coffee table has been knocked over. He chuckles, taking his coat off and hanging it by the door. “Welcome home, my love.”

After the broken glasses, Gil makes it a point to not drink. He walks over to the kitchen to grab a tub of ice cream and a spoon. As he brings it to the living room, he sits the tub down under a napkin (Jackie hated it when he didn’t) and flips to some trashy cable movie like they used to do. The temperature in the room continues to drop so he grabs a blanket to get comfy.

He spends the night with Jackie. Something in his gut tells him there she’s nearby, watching the movie with him and critiquing the horrible acting job by the cast. If Malcolm was over, he would sit by their feet and ask a million questions instead of actually watching the movie.

His chest warms at the memory. He feels lighter like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. He hasn’t been this content since the funeral, and the change soothes his mind knowing that they were around. It makes him want to live again. For her, and for Malcolm.

Jackie moves from her spot on the couch to stand next to Malcolm, holding him and smiling wistfully as they watch over Gil. Malcolm leans his head on hers, relieved to know that he was going to be okay.

Finally, Gil is at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to yell at me on my tumblr @wonder-boy. Thank you for reading!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [anything](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25036933) by [Love_Me_Dead](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Love_Me_Dead/pseuds/Love_Me_Dead)




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